Amazon Cloud Player/Droid app

[Deitz Dittrich]

Anybody looked into this?.. Seems like a pretty slick idea.. Your thoughts?

[DTro]

Not familiar with that one, but a friend has some sort of app/software installed on his phone that can stream his entire music library (at home on his PC) right to his phone.

We used it a lot on water last year. Amazing technology.

[pureinsanity]

Get a bigger SD card and put your music on it?

[Shack]

Cloud is cool stuff. I have not dug into this app but it is somewhat of a buzz, but IMO with the wrong crowd when it comes to being labeled truly with a "Cloud" tag. The prior chat I picked up on last week before the release the other day is this is going to be basically a VLC/VNC into your peronsal Home Group or Home Network. Has me scratching my head when they chose to use "Cloud" with a remote media streaming PC application to mobile app. Then this app would be just a remote view of what you're hosting from your home based virtual server, which your mobile device & app pulls the stream from and on the fly turns your Home Group streaming media into a mobile friendly display & menu. Basically a remote web IP based sync (lack of better words and sorry) without involving the downloadable file transfer. The other theory was that you are allowing/uploading your media to an Amazon virtual network/server, which would mean your not really pulling/viewing "your" media from your Home Group or home network or really in the Cloud. In this case this is nothing new on the mobile scene and Amazon is getting on the mobile cloud scene with using the word Cloud while not using Cloud services? I will do some digging. Dropbox and several other App's offer this with remote hosting and storage of media.

[delcecchi]

The way the article I saw said the music would be stored on Amazon's servers. Not true? Then why has the music industry gone ape?

[DTro]

All I'm saying is that there is a simple way too do this by streaming right from your pc. Nick we are talking terrabytes of music.

[Shack]

I got into the Cloud concept last year and have really found all this interesting so forgive me if this gets long, drawn out and weird. All based on perception because honestly no one really knows and I hate anyone digging into this and relating it to the Cloud platform. Plus my knowledge with Amazon and this new feature is very limited and subject to change.

Yep Dtro is right on. Jut on my gateway I have 5 T's of hosted NAS within my Home Group I can stream media from on my iPhone. Win Ultimate, SQL Server 8, some setup time and poof, a secure hostable webcore UPnP stream to anything like the Linkstation App . This is the hard way. Easy as pie minus the software downloading time is Air Video. App is $3.00, the software download is free to any home pc. Depending on the 3G signal this works like a charm and you can access all your media on your network or PC. I would bet Dtro's buddy has this or Orb. Orb will even stream WMC sat. cable & antenna stream also. I think $10.00 app. WinAmp is another and I am sure there are many more. Just install the software on your PC and app on your smartphone and you're golden. I will not even get started with the Xbox, Home Networking, Windows Media Center and the many features your can access. I believe one I have not tried yet is streaming content threw the Xbox.

The ability to access in multiple ways on my smartphone has been around for I have to say at least two years. GoDaddy and other places have been able to cheaply do this (under $50) since at least 2007 with unlimited storage and with a couple clicks with their WST, which is Godaddy's novice designer's application, which is a gotta really not know anything service. At least since 2008 a person could setup web pages to display a menu good enough for mobile & FTP'ed media.

Three points about this earth breaking build up. Your PC, Amazon's server and your mobile device. Cloud Services, Cloud Networking, Cloud Servers and "Cloud" can be taken for just what it is being push as right now, today, against what it will be when it is to a point of where it is going. Without digging further yet, this is nothing more than a person uploading & hosting their media & data content (5G's included with an Amazon account , same as Dropbox I believe and up can stream with some work) to a virtual personal server slice. Just a ploy it seems on the surface for a hosting option for your "purchased" music you can buy at Amazon. Just the smallest amount of storage out their though. A person could even use YouTube for the same thing, without restricted storage space. In a video format but music can be easily uploaded in a small flash video format quickly and YouTube even has a playlist to organize and here only one artist. Just click the keep private tab and you have a totally free option. I am not even sure, but you might be able too upload a music file to YouTube.

The Cloud Platform, in its mature stage, is a very cool concept and is coming and already here depending on how you define it. I have been using Google Cloud and while really digging into MS's Power Cloud and Windows Azure as part of some training I am doing. "Cloud" is "Cloud", IMO nothing else no matter how you package it up. Cloud is coming at everyone and holding a steady clip (speed) right now. Faster than the portion of the IT world which has not upgraded to Win7 or Win Server 8 can make up the next set of excuses.

I feel the driving factor behind this deployment into the reality of Cloud is an honest boredom within the open source digging crowd and the tech staff, down to the CEO's & Partners of all big companies across the network grid getting older and wanting to get out of the gridlock and into the Open Flow realm before the sun sets. Instant access and I mean even quicker than the time it takes to get the surge of power from the wall switch up to the bulb, with anything virtual & on a database. Of course with having this kind of access at anytime, anywhere and anyplace from boot-up to eternity. This means, zilch downtime (hard and software), never ever a lag, connection drop or losing your host again. Just pure starting and ending, process to process, faster than the speed of light crazy fast, 24/7/360 till Dooms day and reducing the word redundancy in the tech world to a meaning similar as using the word abacus has become today. Ultimately bringing/delivering everything & anything "tech" and more (if even considered still "tech" when this is reality) in such a way that the human thought process occurs. Effortless, transparent and just happens with no humanly effort other than in documentation & advancement. Just what an IT guy wants to hear.

There are 10 ways you can define anything Cloud, but the reoccurring theme and point of goal for the here and now involves working and allowing access outside the firewall. I would say this is where the Haters hate Cloud the most. Breaking away from and dropping our current traditional forms of network security that we use and know of, to leaving all to chance while firmly in the hands of the unknown. Some of the ideas going on I have read is it all must start from databases main core and move outward to totally reverse the flow of how we, they and them access data from our current means of centrally to only host to host with everything becoming a host outside of its firewall so data can be accessed, stored and distributed in a more efficient virtualized environment.

A totally complete, secure, uninterrupted sync (lack of better words) is needed to be up and running on a true Cloud platform and anywhere close to a point of Open Flow. To give an idea of what and where the "Cloud" actually would be easiest described as the open and unsecured space data travels between the hosts firewall and the end user’s network or PC's firewall. Minus a couple points in between that are secure.

Just image the gaming and how good the game play would be with MW60.

[Shack]

The way the article I saw said the music would be stored on Amazon's servers. Not true? Then why has the music industry gone ape?

When does the music industry not go ape? Amazon sells legal music which I believe is the driving factor behind the build up and what was released.

If I was to guess this secures your music media more and less chance of a lost CD or PC crash and the repurchase market. I assume they fear people will start privately sharing access to their Amazon database for a fee or worse, for free.

[DTro]

Yes it was Orb that he was using.

[pureinsanity]

that is a lot of music. I don't think I even have over 40 gigs of music and I thought I had a lot.

and a battery killer.

[pureinsanity]

I stick to story telling, you tubing, and the occasional jam session if the musical instruments are out.

[Shack]

For music files I would say I am around the 60 gig. I listen to sat. radio more, go figure. This includes though all my transfer overs from my album, 8track, cassette collections and my sound bite and royalty and duty free music. Oh and of course iTunes. Music takes up space, but not like storing raw unedited and edited AVCHD. 1TB alone with my backlog is raw untouched footage. I also store backup copies for a year for the people I have done video projects for. By next year 5 TBs will be too small, but by then my project will be done and completed (enter dr. evil style laugh).

Just amazing how fast these file sizes come and go. Gig was out of site 10 years ago. Now Gig is like a MB was 10 years ago, nothing.